5 Reasons America’s Young May Hate Obamacare

Thanks to a provision written into the 2010 healthcare reform, the Affordable Care Act, insurers paid the $147-million medical bill for the approximately 500,000 young adults aged 19 to 26 who were added to their parents’ insurance policies. This is a sign that one of the first implemented provisions of Obamacare has had its intended effect: shifting costs from hospitals, taxpayers, and families to health insurance companies.

Young people who are not able to take advantage of that provision experience a far different reality, and they might not be so keen on the Affordable Care Act. Here’s a look at why Americans aged 19 to 26 could hate Obamacare:

Typically, the young adult demographic is the most likely to risk going without insurance. Because they are unlikely to suffer from the health conditions that send their parents to the doctor — like heart disease, diabetes, cancer, strokes, and arthritis — coverage often does not seem worth the expense. Regardless of Obamacare, that opinion is still a common one.

But, as this demographic is cheap to insure, the Obama administration needs to convince young people to sign up for insurance on the superstore-like exchanges this October in order to balance out older or sicker patients more likely to sign up for health insurance as soon as possible. Their insurance premiums cover the big bills for the relatively small number of sick people. According to estimates made by the Obama administration, approximately 7 million people will sign up for coverage via the exchanges in 2014 and between 2.6 million and 2.7 million of those enrollees need to be young, cheap-to-insure Americans for the system to work.